


rosemary (for remembrance)

by meretricula



Series: Where Have All The Flowers Gone? [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Incest, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-04
Updated: 2010-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Queen Lucy the Valiant stood on her balcony, staring out at her beautiful, wonderful, eternal kingdom. A stranger might have assumed that, with such a vista, she would naturally be in the happiest of moods, but King Edmund the Just had known her all her life, and also was not an idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rosemary (for remembrance)

Queen Lucy the Valiant stood on her balcony, staring out at her beautiful, wonderful, eternal kingdom. A stranger might have assumed that, with such a vista, she would naturally be in the happiest of moods, but King Edmund the Just had known her all her life, and also was not an idiot. He could tell just from the angle of her back that she was angry, and sure enough, when he came up and put an arm around her, her face was scrunched up in a scowl. "Does the weather displease you, love?" he teased her.

"No," she said crossly. "The weather is perfect. The weather is always perfect."

"Well, if it is not the weather, perhaps it was the food at breakfast that has put you in such a temper."

"The food was lovely. As usual."

"Then have you quarreled with a friend?" Edmund asked, growing more serious. "I've not seen Mr Tumnus about for a few days."

"No, I haven't quarreled with Mr Tumnus, or any of the beavers, or Caspian, or Aslan!" Lucy exploded. "You know perfectly well what's put me in such a bloody mood, and you needn't be a prat about it!"

Edmund drew back, startled. "I did not mean to offend. I shall withdraw, if my presence provokes."

"Oh, no, Ed, you know I didn't mean it," she apologized immediately. "I'm sorry. I'm really just wretched today."

Edmund accepted the apology and the soft press of her lips to his cheek with courtly grace. "I was being a bit of a prat."

"It's just - well, you know what it is."

"What else could it be?" he sighed. "Though I suppose you could have said something cruel to Mr Tumnus, and been upset over that as well. You've been in the mood for it of late."

"No one could be cruel to Mr Tumnus," Lucy said. "Or at least, I couldn't. Not even as vexed as I've been. But, dear heart, I don't know what to do!"

"Perhaps he'll come down for tea," Edmund suggested. "Or supper."

"Oh, you know he won't. He won't even touch his breakfast unless I go up to his room specially and nag him into it. All he wants to do is sit there and stare out the window. I even told him that Caspian might like a bit of help in the throne room, now and then, and do you know what he said? He said they'd got on for years and years without him and they could just keep it up!"

"He misses her," he said softly.

"Well, for heaven's sake, we _all_ miss her, but we're not all sitting around like - like _lumps_ over it! This is our happy ending, and I worked long and hard for it," she hissed, "and Peter is not going to ruin it over Susan. I won't have it."

Edmund laughed. "Well, then, don't tell me! Tell him!"

"I shall," she snapped, and then he had to shake off his mirth and hurry up to catch her as she stormed out of her room.

*

Peter's room was quite a climb from Lucy's; he had demanded the highest room in the entire castle, and once installed he had avoided almost everyone by simple expedient of refusing to leave. This gave Lucy time to work up her temper, and Edmund time to think.

He wasn't really sure that Lucy was right about them all missing Susan. He had never been as close to her as the rest of his siblings, which was strange, since he was closer to her in age than to Peter or Lucy. But the invisible line that split them into Peter-and-Susan and Edmund-and-Lucy had divided him from Susan, ever since they came to Narnia. Maybe even before; Edmund had trouble remembering before Narnia. It was like remembering a dream, snatching at the color of a mother's dress or a father's eyes, but forgetting the threads of logic that tied the snippets together.

Susan had rejected Narnia for the real world, and her siblings had assumed that she was rejecting them as well. Edmund understood, as Peter and Lucy could not, standing too close to the heart of the matter, that Susan had never stopped loving them. But Narnia had been a dream for Susan, just as Susan's world was a dream to Edmund, and Susan, who was gentle and kind but too practical to be much of a romantic, could not live in a dream.

Lucy, Edmund thought, smiling to himself, could live anywhere, and he could live wherever she was. But Peter would have never quite fit, and Susan knew it. She had hoped to make Lucy stay, maybe; if he hadn't been there, or held so tight to her, maybe Susan would have succeeded, though he thought not; Lucy could hold even tighter than he. Peter was too much of a king, though, even lost in the dreary nightmare of the real world. He could not and would not compromise, and Susan could not, or would not, give him what he wanted, and so she had lost him before she had even begun.

Of course Susan had never stopped loving them. If she could have stopped loving Peter, she could have stopped him hurting her, and then maybe she would have stopped trying to hurt _him_.

But there was no way for Edmund to say that to Peter, because of the lopsided trio who had come when Aslan called, Edmund alone did not mourn Susan's absence. She would be happier in her world, and when it lost its charms, she would remember the colors of her childhood dreams, and then, then, Edmund was certain, they would see her again. "If they be two," he murmured, recalling for a moment the words of a schoolroom, now far behind him, in the past and another world, "they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two; thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show to move." He left off the the end, for it was not yet true: but doth, if th' other do. It would be true, someday. Susan would come.

Until then, Lucy was not going to let Peter ruin their happy ending. "Peter!" she called, as they finally neared the top of the stairs. "Peter, are you up?"

He did not reply, and she barged into the room without knocking. The door was not locked, Edmund noted, and so Peter must not have truly wished to avoid their company.

Or else, he thought with a sigh, looking at his older brother, he had simply not wanted to bother getting up to fix the bolt. Peter was sitting on the bed, though at least he was dressed and not under the covers, staring out the window. His eyes were glassy; he did not look up at Lucy's voice. "Oh, Peter," she sighed, "Peter, I don't even know what to do with you."

Edmund squeezed her hand once and let go, stepping back. She smiled at him, gratefully, and then crawled onto the bed, her focus entirely on Peter. "Peter, darling, will you look at me?"

She stroked his hair out of his face, and that got his attention at last. "Oh, Lucy," Peter said vaguely. "What are you doing here?"

She looked at him, holding his face still with both hands, while Edmund watched and wondered if this could possibly work. When Peter finally came back to himself, she leaned forward and kissed him.

Peter nearly fell off the bed as he jumped backwards, sputtering. "Lucy! What are you _doing_?"

"I know you miss Susan," she said seriously. "I miss her, too. But you can't stay up here hiding from the world forever. This is your happy ending too, and you're going to be happy if it kills us both." She twisted around to look at Edmund, holding Peter still with a vise-like grip on his wrist. "Come on, Ed."

Edmund climbed up onto the bed and settled behind Peter, his arms snaking around his brother's waist. "It's all right, Peter," he said. "It really is all right." Peter turned as best he was able, with Edmund wrapped around him and Lucy holding onto his arm, to argue or maybe just glare, and Edmund kissed him long and deep and not at all softly. When he drew back, Peter looked rather dazed, but not in the unhappy way he had for so long, so Edmund was counting it as a victory.

Lucy sort of slithered into Peter's lap while he was still too overwhelmed to protest and pressed herself against him, short-circuiting any objection. "We love you, Peter. You know that, don't you?"

"I..." Peter made a visible effort to pull himself together. "Of course I do, Lucy. And I love you. But you don't have to - "

"I don't _have_ to do anything," Lucy said, insulted. "But I love you, and I want you to be happy. And you aren't. So I'm going to make you happy, and you're going to do what _I_ want, because clearly what you want isn't getting you anywhere."

As a strategy, Edmund thought, bemused, it certainly had Lucy written all over it. It would never have worked for him; but then, Lucy had always been special to Peter, and could get 'round him more often than not.

"Ed?" Peter asked quietly, and Edmund blinked in surprise. "I won't - if you don't want - "

"Don't be ridiculous," he said dismissively. "I love you, too. I wouldn't have come if I didn't want to."

"Thank you," Peter said, which Lucy correctly interpreted as consent. She pounced.

*

"Peter," Lucy mumbled, then spat out a mouthful of her hair. They were lying in a tangle of sweaty limbs on top of Peter's bed, which was not quite big enough for all three of them.

"Hmm?" Peter hummed, his face squashed into Edmund's shoulder. Edmund ran an idle hand through his hair, which somehow still looked kingly, even mussed.

"You're coming to our room after supper," Lucy announced, as firmly as she could, given that Peter was absent-mindedly stroking the soft skin right where her waist curved out into her hip. "I hate the stairs."

"Mmhmm," Peter said. Edmund stretched out his neck enough to press a kiss to his brother's forehead, which he sleepily returned on the swell of Edmund's bicep, and squeezed Lucy's hand.

Itchy with sweat and Lucy's hair, overheated, and, for the moment, perfectly content, they drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> the poem Edmund quotes is John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." the title, obviously, is from Shakespeare's _Hamlet_.


End file.
